friends; you were commiserating my fate, left as I was a poor orphan in the world.  You described my dependent position, and how unfortunate a future was before me, unless some very happy star watched over me.  I understood well what you said.  I saw, perhaps too clearly, what you appeared to hope of me, and what you thought I ought to do.  I made rules to myself, according to such limited insight as I had, and by these I have long lived; by these, at the time when you so kindly took charge of me, and had me with you in your house, I regulated whatever I did and whatever I left undone.

“But I have wandered out of my course; I have broken my rules; I have lost the very power of feeling them.  And now, after a dreadful occurrence, you have again made clear to me my situation, which is more pitiable than the first.  While lying in a half torpor on your lap, I have again, as if out of another world, heard every syllable which you uttered.  I know from you how all is with me.  I shudder at the thought of myself; but again, as I did then, in my half sleep of death, I have marked out my new path for myself.

“I am determined, as I was before, and what I have determined I must tell you at once.  I will never be Edward’s wife.  In a terrible manner God has opened my eyes to see the sin in which I was entangled.  I will atone for it, and let no one think to move me from my purpose.  It is by this, my dearest, kindest friend, that you must govern your own conduct.  Send for the Major to come back to you.  Write to him that no steps must be taken.  It made me miserable that I could not stir or speak when he went.  I tried to rise—­I tried to cry out.  Oh, why did you let him leave you with such unlawful hopes!”

Charlotte saw Ottilie’s condition, and she felt for it; but she hoped that by time and persuasion she might be able to prevail upon her.  On her uttering a few words, however, which pointed to a future—­to a time when her sufferings would be alleviated, and when there might be better room for hope, “No!” Ottilie cried, with vehemence, “do not endeavor to move me; do not seek to deceive me.  At the moment at which I learn that you have consented to the separation, in that same lake I will expiate my errors and my crimes.”

CHAPTER XV

Friends and relatives, and all persons living in the same house together, are apt, when life is going smoothly and peacefully with them, to make what they are doing, or what they are going to do, even more than is right or necessary, a subject of constant conversation.  They talk to each other of their plans and their occupations, and, without exactly taking one another’s advice, consider and discuss together the entire progress of their lives.  But this is far from being the case in serious moments; just when it would seem men most require the assistance and support of others, they all draw singly within themselves, every one to act for himself, every one to work in his own fashion; they conceal from one another the particular means which they employ, and only the result, the object, the thing which they realize, is again made common property.